No Tomorrow

by Jake Hinkson

  Upstairs in court, the judge got to make his speech. “I’ve been in my chambers seeking the counsel of God almighty,” he began, and I pretty much lost interest in what he was saying after that. He would talk about himself, about how he had to weigh the public good and the laws of the land and all that, but I knew that the answer to the only question that I had would come at the end of this rhetorical masturbation. He finally brought it to a close a few minutes later, recapturing my attention when he said, “Therefore, I sentence you Miss William Dixon to death by electrocution.”

  And that was that. They pulled me out of there, threw me in the cage for a few days, and then hauled me up to the death house.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Dear William,

  A few days ago we received a letter from a publishing company in New York City. A Mister W.F. Fawcett is interested in publishing your story in a book form. He says he has written to you about authoring your story or selling the rights to him, but you have rebuffed him on both counts. I know you know all the details of the proposed book deal.

  Now he says that he will give us a portion of the proceeds if I can convince you to write the story.

  I know what you must be thinking. ‘Dear old mom comes out of the woodwork to try to make some money.’ But, dear, I must tell you now that we have fallen on hard times. Burt’s foot got run over a year ago by a gas truck, and he hasn’t been able to walk right ever since. The money from this book deal would help us more than you could know.

  Think of what it would mean to us. While I know I was not much of a mother to you, please also consider that your notorious reputation will be a blot on my name for the rest of my life. After the mistakes of my youth, I have tried to live my life as a good Christian woman, but now the papers speak of my firstborn daughter in the same breath as Ruth Snyder and Belle Gunness and Bonnie Parker –

  They say worse, that you lured that preacher’s wife into types of immorality that I cannot bring myself to even write about.

  This is a stain on me, on my children, your brother Earle, and your sisters Katherine and Pearl.

  So please consider signing the contract which Mister Fawcett has proposed. If you have admitted to your crimes as the papers say you have, if you have been so defiant as to spit and curse in the courtroom as they say you have, then you might just as well write this book. If your family must pay for your notoriety, then we might just as well profit by it as well.

  Forgive me if any of this sounds cold, but I think if you consider things from my position you will see that you owe me some recompense for the dishonor you have brought to me.

  Cordially,

  Your Mother

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Dear Mother,

  Go to hell.

  Your Daughter,

  Billie

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Today’s the day.

  The warden sent a preacher in to talk to me this morning. He was a jug-eared old man with liver spots the size of polka dots. Clutching a Bible with both hands, he told me, “Despite everything you’ve done, the Lord still loves you. The blood of Christ covers all sins, even yours. You can still be saved, Miss Dixon. Jesus has not turned away from you, and he will not give up on you. But at the moment of death – at that very moment – it will be too late.”

  “I appreciate you coming to see me,” I said. “But I don’t think so.”

  “You must understand,” he pleaded, “that although you are going to die in just a few hours, your soul is going to live forever. Where do you want to spend eternity? Down in a hell that will be far worse than any pain you feel in that awful chair? Or up in the heavenly realms, with the Lord of all creation?”

  “You really think there are invisible worlds out there?”

  “This book here says that there are.”

  “I know it does.”

  “Miss Dixon … if thinking you’re smarter than God led you to this room, then what good has your obstinacy done you? Shouldn’t you grab holt of God’s hand before he draws it back forever?”

  I leaned forward. “Sir, if I could believe for one second that there was really a God in heaven, then I would kiss his ass all day long to get me out of this fix I’m in. But I can’t believe it. Not even for one second.”

  That preacher meant well, I think. He’s just an old ignoramus who’s made a living out of selling redemption to a bunch of dupes. Maybe the only way he could pull that off was to convince himself that it was all true. But I know better. I’ve always known better. You make your choices and those choices have consequences. That’s all there is to know. The rest of it – religion and redemption and all that – it’s all just moonshine.

  The preacher left shaking his head.

  After that, the warden and a couple of jailers came in with the matrons on loan from the women’s prison to ask me if I had any requests – did I want to eat one last meal that wasn’t pig slop? Did I want to fire off a last will and testament?

  I didn’t care about any of that. I don’t have anything to leave anyone.

  ~ ~ ~

  I forget how long I’ve been on death row. A few months at least, but it’s hard to keep up with it when every day is the same and you never see the sun. It doesn’t really matter how long it’s been. It’s been long enough that everyone has had their say. The newspapers have published their editorials, the politicians have made their speeches. Some folks wanted me dragged out to a tree and strung up the minute the judge handed down his verdict. Others think it’s pure evil to electrocute a woman, no matter what she’s done. There was a group from some university in New York that wanted to come down and make a big show of rallying around me, but I told them to go to hell. I didn’t want to spend my remaining days crying for the newspapers.

  I have gotten some pretty good mail in here, though. A lot of it has been misspelled invective and creative name-calling. My favorite was “The Whore of Sodom.” I asked one of the matrons if she’d see to it that “Billie Dixon, Whore of Sodom” was put on my tombstone. She got a kick out of that. She even called in a couple of the other matrons so I could say it again.

  I got some fan mail, too. One guy wrote to tell me that he’d never met a preacher he didn’t want to kill. And I got two love letters, neither of which had return addresses, both from women. They were both a couple of screwballs, but one of the letters was pretty steamy. She said she kept a newspaper clipping with my picture next to her bed and used it to help her pleasure herself. The other letter was more romantic. She said she understood why I had killed Amberly, said it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever heard of, said it made her cry every time she thought about it. I wanted to write her back and tell her that I hadn’t killed Amberly on purpose, but it wouldn’t have done any good, even if I’d had a return address. No one believes I killed Amberly on accident. Sometimes I’m not even sure.

  The cell here is a windowless cinder block that somehow stays damp all the time. I’ve had a cough off and on the whole time I’ve been here. The food is scraped together from whatever the hogs won’t eat. Arkansas is a hell of place to die.

  I don’t know what time it is now. They’ll be coming for me soon.

  ~ ~ ~

  Late this afternoon, a matron came in to tell me that I had a visitor. I knew who it was without asking. There’s only one person it could have been.

  I felt bad for the way I look. I’m thin and pale, and my gray prison dress was probably fashioned from old coal sacks. But I did want to see her.

  The jailers took me outside. The yard is just a patch of grass in the middle of a dirt lot, but at least it’s outside. Over the side of the high wall, I could see the crown of a tree starting to bud. Today was warm, but the sun was going down and a chill was starting to settle. I stood there and felt the last rays of daylight on my face.

  A moment later the door opened, and she stepped through.

  “How have you been?” I asked.

  Lucy looked good. She wore a black dress with
black heels and carried a small white purse with a crescent cane handle. To my surprise, she was also wearing lipstick and some make-up. She looked damn good. A little sad maybe, but damn good.

  She said, “I’ve been fine. But you, how are you?”

  I shrugged. “It’s … terrible. I don’t know what to say beyond that. They want it to be awful, I guess, and they’ve succeeded. This is an awful place.”

  She nodded.

  “Have you ever been here?” I asked.

  “No. First time.”

  “Well, thank you for coming to see me.”

  She nodded. “I felt I should.”

  “How’s Eustace?”

  “He’s fine. We’re being replaced, did you hear?”

  “No,” I said. “What happened?”

  “The Picketts. Lionel made it known that he was going to challenge Eustace in the upcoming election, so I went to see him. I told him that if he’d stop running us down around town, we’d quietly retire. I saw no reason to subject Eustace to public humiliation.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I feel like that’s my fault.”

  “No, your case was just an excuse. As soon as Lionel came home from the war, our days in office were numbered. We only got the job because the last sheriff died and no one wanted to take over. I was the secretary and Eustace was the guard at the jail. The boys who would have naturally filled the position had gone off to fight the war, so the town entrusted it to us until they got back. All things considered, I think I did a good job. If I was a man, I’d get to keep it. I’m not.”

  I nodded and watched the sky. The amber sun would be sinking for another hour or so before the horizon swallowed it up, but I knew I wouldn’t be outside to see it. I watched the sun disappear over the prison wall, and that was it. That’s as close as I’ll get to a final sunset.

  “Doesn’t it make you angry?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “That you don’t get to keep the job?”

  “I can lose the job and be angry, or I can lose the job and not care. It’s easier to live with it if I choose not to care.”

  She looked at me, her eyes still as guarded as they had ever been. She was so different from Amberly. Everything about Amberly had invited me in. Lucy wasn’t cold, but everything about her kept me at a distance.

  “Do you think we could have been friends?” I asked her.

  She blinked at that, genuinely surprised by the question, and parted her lips as she struggled for an answer. “I don’t know, Billie.”

  “I don’t mean now, after all that’s happened. I understand how you must see me now. What I mean is, is there a version of this world where we could have been friends?”

  Lucy took a deep breath and said, “The world is what it is, Billie. I’ve spent my whole life trying not to imagine something better. Dreaming only hurts.”

  “Not for me. Not here. Not today. A couple of dreams are all I have left. So dream a little, just for me.”

  She gave me a smile like a small gift. Then, quietly, she said, “You and I in a different world? Who’s to say what could have happened.”

  I smiled.

  She lowered her eyes.

  I asked, “Have you ever been married?”

  Still looking at the ground, she said, “No.”

  “Do you think you’ll ever be married?”

  “No.”

  The door opened. “Ladies,” a guard called out. “You need to wrap it up.” Then he leaned against the doorway, smoking a cigarette and glancing absently at the sky.

  She looked at me.

  Quietly, I said, “I know this can’t mean much, coming from someone like me in a place like this. But I wish we could have been friends. I wish I’d met you before I met... I just wish I’d seen you more clearly.” The guard in the doorway coughed up something solid and spit it in the dirt. I shook my head. “I wish we could have been friends. I wanted you to know that.”

  Lucy lowered her head and put her hand to her mouth. When she raised her head, she said, “Thank you for telling me that, Billie.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  She nodded. “I should go.”

  The guard threw his cigarette on the ground. Lucy smiled at me and nodded. Like the sun disappearing over the prison wall, this is all I would get.

  “Thank you for coming to see me,” I said.

  “Of course,” she said.

  They led us back inside. The matron took me by the arm. A guard opened a door for Lucy. Beyond it was the long hallway that led to the front of the prison.

  “Thank you again for coming to see me, Miss Harington,” I said.

  Lucy stopped at the door. “Claude’s open for business regularly now,” she said. “I’m going to help him run the Eureka. I thought you’d like to know.” Then she turned and walked down the hall.

  ~ ~ ~

  And that was that. Since Lucy left, I’ve been sitting here with nothing but the echo of my thoughts bouncing around my head.

  It’s just me.

  I wonder if that old preacher I talked to this morning was right about there being a life after this one. I doubt it. All I am is the brain thinking these thoughts. Once it’s fried and in the ground –

  The sound of keys clang down the hall.

  Hinges scream as a gate opens.

  Footsteps are coming my way.

  The cell door opens and they all crowd in. The warden and the guards stand against the wall as the matrons pull me to my feet and shackle my hands. No preacher. I guess they figure I’ve had my chance.

  They lead me out. A short hallway, some wooden stairs. The groan of wood as we go down to the basement.

  A little room. They sit me in a metal chair next to a wooden table. A couple of matrons come in with a bowl of water and some scissors. They cut my hair with the scissors. I watch clumps of it plop down in my lap and slide off to the floor.

  Another matron shaves my head with a straight-razor. Cold water runs down my spine. She nicks my scalp and blood drops in my eye.

  The women leave and the men pick me up and take me down the hall.

  The room is smaller than my bedroom in LA. The chair is against the wall. It’s a rickety looking thing. They push me down on it. This is the room I’m going to die in, surrounded by these men.

  They strap down my hands and feet. I shut my eyes. I don’t want to see what’s happening. I don’t want to cry. Not for these sons of bitches.

  The warden reads some legal bullshit. I hum loudly and shut him out. They must think I’m crazy.

  The warden asks me something. I keep humming, drown him out, but he steps toward me and shouts, “Do you have any last words?”

  I keep my eyes shut. I hum. I don’t want to say my last words to these men. I said my last words to Lucy.

  The warden steps away and says something to the man with the switch and as he’s about to burn my brain out of my skull I picture Lucy Harington’s face one last time and I think That is one hell of a lady.

  = = =

  Thank you for reading.

  Please review this book. Reviews help others find New Pulp Press and inspire us to keep providing these marvelous tales.

  If you would like to be put on our email list to receive updates on new releases, contests, and promotions, please go to NewPulpPress.com and sign up.

  About the Author

  Jake Hinkson is the author of several books, including the novels Hell On Church Street, The Posthumous Man, and The Big Ugly, the short story collection The Deepening Shade, and the essay collection The Blind Alley: Exploring Film Noir’s Forgotten Corners. His work has been translated into French by èditions Gallmeister. Born in Arkansas and raised in the Ozarks, he currently lives in Chicago.

  www.newpulppress.com/

 

 

 
e this book with friends